Nate Silver Douses Operation Demoralize: Harris ‘on the Decline’ in ‘Key Swing State’ Polls
“One of the reasons I’m not super sympathetic to complaints about the convention bounce stuff is that Harris is in fact on the decline in polls over the past couple of weeks in most of the key swing states”
The tried and true Operation Demoralize media tactic is, of course, still in full effect, with the press working overtime to cover for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris while hyping a horserace between the veep and GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump in the process.
Operation Demoralize, as explained by Prof. Jacobson, is when the MSM works to “create a narrative that it’s over, that the Democrat’s going to win, that it’s hopeless for Republicans to do anything,” and we’ve certainly seen that in the reports that talk about the alleged “Kamala surge,” her “Sun Belt gains,” the “rising enthusiasm” for the Harris-Walz campaign, etc.
In contrast, the coverage we get of Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) revolves around manufacturing “controversies” over statements taken out of context, predictably pushing “Russian interference” conspiracy theories (again), and trotting out disgruntled anti-Trump Republicans to bash the former president.
In the midst of it all sits polling guru Nate Silver, who since Harris’ ascendance to the top of the Democrat Party ticket has been slicing through the media/Democrat spin machines to try and find the real story of where things stand in the race at this point in the game.
Silver is an admitted supporter of Harris’ campaign and says he plans on voting for her. But his stats models and number-crunching of swing state polls are showing a decline for Harris despite the pomp and pageantry (and media fangirling) of the Democrat National Convention last month:
One of the reasons I'm not super sympathetic to complaints about the convention bounce stuff is that Harris is in fact on the decline in polls over the past couple of weeks in most of the key swing states.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) September 6, 2024
I’d also note that Harris’s raw polling averages have DECLINED in most swing states since the start of the DNC. This data is NOT subject to the convention bounce adjustment. She’s had a run of pretty mediocre state polling. pic.twitter.com/smiCFiznQW
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) September 6, 2024
In a lengthy write-up at his site, Silver went into detail about how the Electoral College could give Democrats nightmares again in 2024:
And here's my longer story on the state of the race.
The Electoral College / popular vote gap has gotten quite bad for Harris. Now a 20% chance she wins the popular vote but loses the EC.https://t.co/mHgElUsmaZ
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) September 6, 2024
From the piece:
…let’s talk about the elephant in the room: the Electoral College is starting to look like a challenge for Kamala Harris. This was a problem for Democrats in 2016, of course, and also in 2020 — when Joe Biden won the popular vote by 4.5 points, but the tipping-point state, Wisconsin, went for Biden by only 0.6 points.
[…]
The problem for Harris is that Donald Trump has been gaining on her in our polling averages, too — at least in the most important Electoral College states. If, say, Harris had gained 1 point, when the convention bounce adjustment was expecting her to gain 2 points, that would look like more of a rounding error in the model. Instead, though, she’s actually losing ground since the start of the convention in swing state polls.
[…]
Still, a two-and-a-half-point Electoral College bias is a lot to overcome in a political environment when most elections are extremely close. And at the risk of piling on bad news for Democrats, I’d note that polls show a considerably smaller GOP lean in Wisconsin than in 2016 and 2020, a possible concern for Harris given the history of polling errors there.
Wow.
Trump’s lead widens in Nate Silver’s model.
🔴 Trump – 62%
🔵 Harris – 38%Trump is now a bigger favorite to win the electoral college, than Harris is to win the popular vote. pic.twitter.com/XydCzEbRih
— Geiger Capital (@Geiger_Capital) September 6, 2024
prolly the most important chart on Nate Silver’s substack and why I’m stressed af about the state of the race rn pic.twitter.com/8u4jfoQQfu
— Sean Francis (@musingmymind) September 6, 2024
As Silver noted on his Substack (emphasis his), “…we have the Electoral College in toss-up range even if Harris wins the popular vote by between 2 and 3 points. And she’d need to win the popular vote by roughly 4 points to truly [be] ‘safe’ in the Electoral College.”
Relatedly, there was also this:
Kamala Harris’ national lead was +5 in the previous Emerson poll.
Now, it’s +2. https://t.co/tOOlBne2gu
— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) September 5, 2024
Honeymoon seems to be over… https://t.co/YjQP1qyzZ2
— Henry Rodgers (@henryrodgersdc) September 5, 2024
It goes without saying that the numbers are subject to change and likely will. But one smart (IMO) rule of thumb to go by in the coming weeks for the Trump campaign and its supporters is to proceed like they are 20 points behind regardless of whatever good news they get polling-wise and keep pushing the pedal to the metal.
Because Democrats don’t just have their own internal war machine; they’ve got the media in their back pockets, too. And as we saw in 2016, 2020, and now as well, their combined forces will stop at nothing to keep Trump out of the White House.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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Comments
I didn’t think the Democrats could do it but somehow they managed to find someone even less popular than Hillary 😂😂
Like Hillary, the powers behind the scene want her gone.
Which leaves the interesting questions; if somehow [probably by cheating] ¿Qué Mala? manages to “win” the election, what percentage of the electorate will consider the “win” to be illegitimate, and what will happen then?
Subotai Bahadur
“Que’ Mala”?! Mucho bueno, SB!
Aha! I see the problem. They forgot to utilize the “recovery summer” and “green shoots” narratives. That would have done it, for sure. I think they decided against using the powerful “green shoots” line for Kamala because they thought it would remind people of Traitor Joe covered with 6 feet of dirt, though still ostensibly “running the country”.
Meh, I’m sick of speculating.
Bring on the show!
Early voting in Minnesota (I believe) begins on 20 Sept so you don’t have long to wait.
I was taught way, way back last century that Voting Day was the first Tuesday of November; now it appears that even non-citizens can vote many times in many different states under several different names –
and nobody seems to give a hoot.
First Tuesday after the first Monday, but yeah.
ur right – TNX
You mean having her drunkenly babbling about lipstick and the color of coffee cup tops isn’t moving the needle in her favor?!?!?!?
It’s truly mystifying.
This is the potential leader of the free world. Xi and Putin are planning to carve up the world as we speak.
I’m going out on a limb here to predict a Reaganesque landslide for Trump.
Harris is an awful candidate and a grotesque human being. Walz, well when we find out “the rest of the story” on him I think even the Democrats will rue the day they settled on him.
Harris’s botched abortion of a candidacy is tragic for the very cohorts that she purports to represent.
There are millions of blacks in this country that would make fine presidents; Harris is not one of them.
There are millions of women who would make fine presidents; Harris is not one of them.
Hell, there are millions of democrats that would do a good job of being president; Harris is not one of them either.
The peak of Harris’ political career was on her knees in front of Willy Brown.
And if that sounds crude and cruel, well sometimes the truth is like that.
Reagan won by 9-points and carried all but 6-states giving him a 430+ Electoral Vote margin. 1984 was even more decisive. Neither of those scenarios are going to happen. The absolute bottom floor for any Dem candidate now is 225 EVs (227 when Hillary ran & lost, but they lost some EVs in the 2020 census). California is so large and incredibly politically lopsided, Harris still will have an excellent chance of winning the national popular vote even if she’s getting comfortably beat in key battleground states. I personally think it’s more likely we see a 269/269 tie than it is Trump carries more than 300 Electoral Votes. I think it’s more likely he’s right around 280.
The most striking thing about Reagan’s 1984 landslide was other than Mondale’s home state, the ONLY place the Democrat party won was…. Washington, DC.
Not doubting your calculus as of today but we’ve still got a lot of time for her to completely implode. I don’t see her being any more successful in debating Trump than Biden was. She’s that bad.
With early voting starting now it may not make a difference if she implodes in a month which, of course, is why Dems push so hard for it.
Hillary’s popular vote victory margin was entirely from California which she won by over 4 million votes. Exclude California and she loses the popular vote by about 1..5 million which is about her margin in New York.
That’s absolutely correct. The problem is Harris will do even better than Clinton did in California. Turnout was also low(ish) in 2016. That changed in 2020…for Covid reasons. Clinton won 8.7M-votes in 2016. 4-years later, Biden won 11.1M-votes, Trump’s opportunity to edge Harris in the NPV will ultimately come down to turnout in CA.
Of course, if she wins the PV but loses the EC, there will be increased screaming about eliminating the EC, amending the Constitution, illegitimate presidency, etc. The whining we be roaring this time.
I don’t see that happening. I’m hoping Trump wins, but my current guess is 287-251. Trump takes Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona. Nevada…. maybe. (If not then 281-257.)
She sucks (heh), but there are far too many who will vote Democrat no matter what. And there aren’t enough lean-blue states to make much difference. Where Harris is winning she’s generally winning big, those states where there’s no chance of a Republican winning a race for dog catcher.
I guess we’ll see. If she crashes and burns at the debate that could change, but there’s no chance of a blowout.
He had a Reaganesque landslide in 2020.
How’d it actually work out?
Why does anyone give this moron any attention?
This is the same leftist hack that gave Hildabeast a 71% chance of beating Trump one day before the ‘16 election.
Ignore the polls and pollsters. Just go vote.
Way too close to prevent even a midly competent voter fraud operation by the Democrats. Trump needs to be about 5 points ahead for us to feel comfortable.
Harris seems to be running a MIA campaign, much like Joe Biden’s MIA presidency.
The popular vote vs the electoral college illustrates what a group of genius men our Founding Fathers were. They correctly predicted what pure “democracy” would do and set up safeguards against it.
Biden won nothing. He garnered fewer than 59 million legitimate votes. And the majority of those societal parasites. Sick of playing into the premise Biden ‘won’. Those 22 million votes were manufactured across all 50 states.
Unless you’re dumb enough to believe he received 11 million more votes than the First Historic Black™